Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance.
Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors -
many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2006.
ZiPS is projecting equivalent production - a .240 ZiPS projection may end up
being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play
is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting
the future.

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I'm not surprised by Lowry--that's pretty good. I'm a little surprised by Cain, and also by Niekro being less terrible than I'd have thought, now that I think about it.
Now I can do NL West ZIPS-PT, which I'll post later this overnight.

So the Giants have 4 or 5 guys who can hit, but may not be able to play everyday. Then ZIPS only has Schmidt with an ERA under 4. This is a year you hope the team starts off fast, because it will be hard for this aging ship to catch up if a few calamities strike hard.

If the Giants are going to win the NL West, they'll need more than 420 PA from Bonds.

His marvelous second half notwithstanding, no way Winn does .350/.460 over the course of a full season in PacBell.

I'll be surprised if Morris does that well given the mediocrity of the Giants' defense.

The Giants need Hennessy to do better than a 5.11 ERA (that translates to like an 82 ERA+ in PacBell), even as the #5. It doesn't have to necessarily be Hennessy (Correia, Valdez, etc), but someone outside of their presumptive top four (Schmidt, Morris, Cain, Lowry) needs to step up with a near league-average 150-180 innings given the weaknesses in their offense.

Sweeney's rate stats won't look nearly as good if he gets the 300+ PA that I'd expect him to get.

I have Frandsen projected at a pretty nice 283/336/392. Jed Hansen keeps getting projected because my policy is once I start projecting a player, to generally keep projecting him in the future until he's out of baseball.

Jed Hansen is one of those players you point out when people wonder how the Royals got this way - he was a high draft pick and hits 309/394/426 in his cup of coffee at age 24. He doesn't get 100 more plate appearances the rest of his career as the Royals decide they rather play Luis Rivera and Shane Halter.

By the time he could choose his organization, he was having hand and wrist problems and that was the end of his chances. Having his best season in a long time in 2004, putting up a near-.900 OPS (though PCL), the Royals didn't even give him a token at-bat in September and even call up Damian Jackson for playing time instead of him.

I'd be truly upset if MLB ever instituted a revenue system that would allow the Royals, as presently run, to compete.

Dan, memory is a faulty thing. In 1998, after Hansen's tasty cup of coffee in 1997, the Royals played the incumbent Jose Offerman at 2B to the tune of 116 OPS+ (96 OPS+ in '97). In 1999, they played the lesser of "Dos Carlos" duo, Senor Febles and his 89 OPS+ at 2B. Febles was prize #2 of the system behind Beltran. He deserved the shot, showed promise throughout the year and was a defensible choice. He was fast, gap-powered, good OBP potential and was supposed to be a great defender. They forgot to mention more fragile than J D Drew, but no one knew that yet.

Hansen was caught in a numbers game and was released from KC after the '99 season.
It's hard to believe that the Boone-Muser era Royals couldn't use a player, but Hansen was in the wrong place at the wrong time. From a personal standpoint for Hansen, he never got a break but he never really kicked butt so badly that he couldn't be ignored, either.